CHAPTER XXIII
THE RIVER THAMES AND THE RAILWAY ENGINEERING
SHOPS
Noruing illustrates the importance of local conditions
in the engineering trades more forcibly than the rise and
fall of the shipbuilding and engineering works on the
River Thames. In the Victorian period some of the
principal British shipbuilders and engineers were running
prosperous businesses at various points below London
Bridge. Their names were better known than most of the
North Country firms to whom reference has been made in
preceding pages. Economic conditions in the present
generation, however, have forced them out of existence.
It is cheaper to use steel, iron and coal where it is produced
than to bring it hundreds of miles by rail or water to the
seat of manufacture. The skilled workman also prefers
as a rule to live in that district where a great variety of work
is carried on and where the conditions point to more constant
employment and higher wages.
The result of the growth of these industries in the
North was to deprive the Thames of its pre-eminence. Of
all the great firms which flourished fifty or sixty years ago,
hardly any, except Gwynne & Co. of Hammersmith, whose
capital account is being reconstructed, remain, unless they
have migrated to some more suitable spot. The old
Blackwall shipyard dated back to 1612, and was probably
the longest-lived in this country. It was the cradle of the
Orient Line, which was formed forty years ago, by the
union of the two firms of Green and Anderson. Green's
3
1
22€